some call it a necessary humanitarian intervention others a proxy war the amount of the justification several u.s. lawmakers are willing to do what ever it takes to aid syrian rebels whether it's arms or airstrikes or another form of intervention so is america really ready for another war. and cyber gatton or cyber hype the threat of cyber warfare has spawned some disconcerting legislation on capitol hill critics say it could lead to the militarization of the internet in the name of security we'll break it all down. plus from religious freedom to foreign policy to the economy to

national security americans trust the media and the government to direct political discourse but whose interests are those really serving. good evening it's wednesday march seventh seven pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy catherine open you're watching our t.v. . well we begin today in syria where an end to the violence is seemingly nowhere in sight after almost a year of bloody offensives by the government of president bashar al assad that country seems unable to control take control of the escalating unrest meanwhile the opposition groups are too weak and too fragmented to overthrow the regime their stated goal and amid this bloody stalemate a debate here in the u.s. about whether this country should intervene now top u.s. ministration officials and lawmakers have all weighed in on senator john mccain's proposal to launch air strikes in order to help the violence in syria but there is

still no consensus on the call stand the benefits of entangling the u.s. military in another armed conflict now in testimony before the senate earlier today the defense secretary leon panetta seemed a bit cautious about military intervention but also didn't rule out the possibility of war take a look. we are reviewing all possible additional steps that can be taken with our international partners to support the efforts to protect the syrian people to end the violence and ensure regional stability including potential military options if necessary our president obama yesterday cautioned against unilateral military action his administration is reportedly moving to provide direct assistance to the syrian opposition and prelude to an intervention some say yes to cuba. well in this region official told social press yesterday that the policy

of the united states had changed and the national security council essentially was officially seeking the overthrow of the assad regime so regime change i think at this point given the kind of stalemate that exists in that country i think this is exactly the wrong way to proceed and i think it now makes it a fight to the death unless there can be some kind of way that can be brokered between your side government and its own it's well that the difficulty in syria is that it's not sort of a black and white situation in this isn't a simple case of the guys protesters versus bad guy assad and in fact a lot syrians while they seem to be with actually tired of assad in power it's not clear what would happen if he leaves to them considering the sectarian divisions among the population so in light of that does the u.s. position of standing with the rebels translator standing with the syrian people at

large or just a fraction of the population and i think this really doesn't have very much to do with the syrian people i think this has to do with regional politics and if you look at almost all of the statements that are made by americans by israelis by the french by by nato except for the question of iran always comes up when so so that is what this is is it's a move on a regional chess board and in the case of syria we're talking about one of the founders of the arab league we're talking about a country of twenty four million people in the heart of the arab world in very different kind of influence and libya which was really some a peripheral to the arab world and so this is this is a big piece on the board everyone sees it as part of the competition not only with iran but also. iran's allies in the region which means the shiite sections of iraq

it means hezbollah are all of the of the people that are on a sort of associative where i don't think this really has a whole lot to do with the syrian people and i think most observers were that is objective observers think that the syrians are sitting us out most of the syrians you know they've had a fifty eight had a front row view of what happened in iraq with the civil war they observe true million refugees they were a front row seat for the lebanese civil war i don't think the syrian people once a war and i think that this aiding the opposition and with the possibility of arms or communication equipment except for leads in the direction of deepening the civil war i don't know where that's going to go well and as you point out air piece i mean you know handing out to weapons to people you don't know how to fight some guy is he on like as a really scary or minor of catastrophe in afghanistan but if it let's say the u.s. does take that step of arming the rebels what what have some of the potential i

don't have the consequences here i mean who is the same syria free army versus the population what are some of the divisions within the country i think one of the things you're going to do is that you're going to deepen this a period of visions within syria and syria is a very divided country while the majority of people are sunni is about sixty percent of the population some are sixty six percent are sunnis and also have significant numbers of alawite which is a subsection of of of shiites but twelve percent of the population ten percent christians in this truth has armenians and has turkmen it's a very complex kind of country and so what you're essentially new rain is that you're starting to arm one section of a civil war in this case the sunni section that is not likely to just remain in syria it will almost certainly be washed over into lebanon if they were. well we're into iraq and you can even go to turkey it will certainly have an effect on jordan

. if you want to hold our dire by the sin of and gunpowder rule is not a good idea. it's just it's fascinating to me to sort of watch this discussion because it almost seems like there's not a lot of talk i mean we heard senator mccain today talking about how you know the u.s. has a moral responsibility to lead but could you see this moral responsibility if i think we causing more bloodshed if we end up standing behind the wrong people in the conference chair i think actually the people that have taken the high road here are the russians and that is the russians have offered truly are certain regime and to the syrian national council that they would host talks in moscow trying bring the two sides together and get a ceasefire and i don't know if that can happen but but his least it's a step in the right direction i think you could use this recent referendum as

a way to kind of storage the conversation the problem is if you take a position that you will not negotiate with yasser regime if you're looking for regime change and you can aid the rebels what is are talking to another talk about it all and yet you have a stick a stalemate i i mean. i see this going in into really bad places. again it's just really dire situation and it almost seems like there's a catch twenty two at hand because you know the death toll is as estimated by the u.n. and as nearly eight thousand people there is no denying that the president has responded in a fairly brutal way the problem is this situation hasn't called so so far along right now that it's sort of hard to tell you know who's responsible for what at this point i mean what does this say about this whole notion of the responsibility to protect i mean the u.s. may do away with this whole idea with the how that played out in libya where things

like things are unraveling i mean i think the problem here is your so i have you know a lot of double standards if you get a look at the number of palestinians in gaza one point seven million and the number of people that perished in operation cast lead which was the israeli attack and in two thousand in two thousand mind. into gaza a large percentage of constantine's were killed in terms of their percentage of population and syrians now when people try to raise them in the united nations and try to stop that the united states vetoed it so i think what again you know it's not that this isn't a terrible thing i'm no supporter of the us or regime in any way i think it is a group i don't think it's a democratic regime at the same time the ocracy of the united states saying that the russian veto was despicable when they did exactly the same thing with the israelis and gaza and to see the gulf cooperation council as

a moderate gulf saudi arabia qatar the united arab emirates hoping about democracy and syrian people that's a little hard to stomach and again we don't think this is about the syrian people i think this is about syria's. regionally and again. that's what's being done and can have a very briefly it is a political situation solution for the conflict even possible at best point and it has gone on for almost an area and there's been a lot of blood spilled as r. is negotiations and talks of the ball with lucia. that's a good question and i don't really know the answer to it i don't think it's been tried i don't think there really has been an effort to get talks going you may be like you may have reached a point where there's really no going back on the other hand it's a stalemate even if the united states decides to arm the syrian opposition that

unless the army and the security forces turn against the arsenal regime they have done that so far unless you losers also pour in in syria and he hasn't done that before either he does have support particularly among minority communities i don't see that that you can do anything but eventually have negotiation so i think what should be done is that china and russia should be encouraged to up to the arsenal and to see if they can establish a ceasefire. it will mean to us and you will need to pressure the syrian national council and it's ours to agree to sit down with us or regime in neutral territory which reason you have to back off from being a view of regime change then i think you should seek to get going otherwise i just see this getting worse and worse and i'm not convinced that your solution is

going to be overthrown well and of course i know no indication from some of our republican lawmakers in congress that talks would be at all a paddle bill a palatable solution for them but unfortunately we're out of time thank you so much that was con hallinan the columnist for foreign policy in focus ok question what keeps pentagon planners up all night that's even scarier than the threat of a terrorist attack answer a cyber terrorist attack well here top u.s. officials lawmakers and of course defense contractors tell it a cyber pearl harbor is on its way capable of wiping out all of america's financial systems electrical grid and more if you're a regular viewer familiar with this program if you really are with not just the cyber threats but the problem of cyber hype even in these tense fiscal times the pentagon has found ways to shell out more money and cybersecurity is the one portion of defense spending that's actually increasing and a lot of bush era folks who led the war on terror now these security firms that

deal with cyber threats the cyber security industrial complex if you will but a new bill in congress introduced last week by senator john mccain has some folks raising the alarm bells it's called the secure i.d. act and it requires private companies to share information voluntarily about cyber threats in the u.s. government would be overseen by the national security agency now critics say that it's an n.s.a. cyber power grab one that could bring the u.s. closer one step closer to a twenty four seven military surveillance of our online lives so should you be concerned well let's ask someone who knows a thing too about that declan mccullagh is a correspondent with c. net news and. ns us live from san francisco declan welcome back to the program. before we get to the actual bills i want to look at the cyber threat itself because you know we keep hearing about cyber get in cyber nine eleven you know planes falling out of the sky trains the railing is a cyber pearl harbor type attack truly as big of a threat as the pentagon makes it out to be. probably not possible but there are

other threats i mean dirty bombs suitcase nukes including ones a disappeared once the soviet union disintegrated i mean those are the threats i'm worried about i don't really care what the us senate website mean pagan down or being hacked into by anonymous from some of the groups that have been active here and so and so you have the cyber security officials in your budgets and their stature in their future and speaking engagements and payments from the private sector their lives depend on exaggerating the threat and so guess what that's very good so exaggerated and it seems like it's a difficult issue because you know you have the pentagon has a specific interest you have a bunch of lawmakers the median age of weight in congress not to be rude is a little bit out there and it's easy to sort of exaggerate the threat of something that no one really understands all that much about right cybersecurity and of course the great c.d.o.

exciting sexy topic for the media to hype up and so i guess who's speaking taking advantage of here i mean is there's a pent is a pentagon. they they must know something that we don't if they're really pushing the these types of legislation not necessarily i mean we have a cybersecurity that's been compiled of by as far as i can tell a bunch of lawyers and the english majors the lawyers or the politicians and the englishman who are the journalists who are writing up whatever the politicians are saying i mean these that if you talk to actual internet engineers you say yes the inference is gone well yes there are these problems but i think this instead of actually looking power plants or can ask mines up to the internet we just sever those connections so we have a cyber threat in those spaces i don't see a reason why a power point has to be connected to your turnout there isn't if you want to control it google isn't really into the bar. past the physical security.

and so you have people who don't understand the technology saying this is a huge problem especially when they stand to benefit and you have a technologist no not really and i don't want to technologists out although let's just say we were stablished the sort of notion that the cyber threat is perhaps more hype than actual threats right and still we have these bills floating through the help we have legislation from senators lieberman and collins and now there's mccain's secure id act. the letter when the mccain bill seems to be fairly innocuous it's just encouraging companies to submit this information to the government but i guess the fear is that the n.s.a. would oversee it it sounds fairly benign i have to say what why should some people be concerned about it oh i don't see why the n.s.a. which is part of the military i mean people kind of forget this but this is a military agency i don't see why that has to be the agency that is going to be

monitoring or in some way overseeing internet problem reports you know a lot of the concern about this would disappear instantly if a civilian agency were the recipient of these problem reports security or whatever you want to call them that we have a part of commerce and you actually have an organization under g.o.c. that is charged with internet stuff how well them read what the department of education or agriculture welcome justify their existence i mean it's the n.s.a. and especially after the bush administration era our warrantless surveillance of the internet gives people i think probably reasonably you know there's kind of a sense of if you feel creepy. you're just actually saying that this is not necessarily factually you know terrifying and at first it could potentially maybe open the door for some of our private information to start sort of being misused by

that. pentagon oh i think it's fair to say that the n.s.a. under bush. is our private information this was the whole warrantless surveillance program that was sort of backdoor authorized rapturous actively. going to powers an eight am so yes it is not really have a great history here if you go back to the seventy's it's even worse so that's one concern another is kind of feature going to creeping featurism here is want one for is i mean what what happens once information sharing becomes a little less voluntary what happens if there are some legal incentives to share or do you really want the n.s.a. having that info about american citizens and how do you distinguish between cyber a quote unquote kara's someone who wants to bring harm to the united states and for example a protestor i mean what about like the anonymous protesters right there using the internet to make points heard. if you look at the history of american politics

in the last few generations you had examples of the after going monitoring anti-war protesters martin luther king i mean this is this is domestic surveillance and our federal agencies how to roll over how to have conducted. it and we've seen some glimmerings of this again after september eleventh two thousand and one so when you start seeing the department of homeland security saying well you know americans who. who voted a certain way or might be wrong possibly orders are i mean we should monitor little bit more you have to start worrying i think if a company right now i wants to give information to the government they can i'm not sure why this bill is all that necessary media is but i don't think there's going to be a whole lot of support for it in its current form maybe this is just kind of guarding

going to see what how much they can get in the back off or end very very very briefly in the battle between you know cyber threats and saber hype who's winning because that the pentagon is getting a lot of money dedicated to this issue so you know we can raise all the alarm bells that we want but it can get the impression that folks who really think this is a big threat are winning and sort of painting success as they are this is too much money there's billions and billions of dollars kicking around if you and you might get a part of that if you say hey cyber threats are really serious it could be the next pearl harbor and if you want to mark this down you might be in a nonprofit or working at it think tank and you're not going to be tapping into that dollar flow declan thank you so much for taking the time as always that was the declan mccullagh correspondent with seen at and years. well still ahead still ahead on our team americans trust the government and media to work for the best interests of the public but that might not necessarily always be the case so when

are these institutions allowed to have an opinion a story up next. to the capital and i'm. going gerard's right right i mean it's like a derivative of actual paper it's a food product essentially. much stronger than anything else you buy a lot. stronger than any one of the before you ever put.

ideological views are often pushed by governments of politicians are going to get in the media that is not how it actually should be our views resident reporter in the big apple took to the streets of new york to find out. when is it ok for a government or the media to support an ideology this week let's talk about that i don't think it ever should happen. i think that the government is the serve the people the media is that to report the news not make editorial direction on any of the reporting i don't think it's right to take them out and say they support it but i think they can do it in different ways so if you support morris is the verb the way. that's probably what they do anyway right. probably you think

people are choosy about who is supporting their cause. absolutely they are there people are too easily swayed from the propaganda or is the people the top one has to believe something that one else follows like she feels out there own personality and look at the facts in the details make their own opinion that's what they should do and not just call everybody else any propaganda that goes against our moral basically feelings any issues and what we believe in it's no good but we have to be tolerant to whatever other people are one of the and what they believe in like it would in the united states we're a free country and you can say i know what they said we can do whatever you feel like when we should be the same way with all other countries in the world so there's a pretty great principle in psychology that you you start and finish where you are so yeah you like what you like and you don't like the other guy for liking something different but that's just human nature but i mean the principle of

democracy it's so unusual it's a kind of a crazy idea that you can get wacky people like your answer your crazy sister and you just line them up by the millions and you somehow assume that all these crazy people acting together will have a wisdom greater than a king do you think that governments try to impose its will through propaganda without a doubt so why do some people when they hear their point of view being spouted think just the same time but then if they don't agree with it they call it propaganda. well. the fact is the nature of that is the nature of rhetoric in general your your opinion is always. right and everyone else's opinion is always propaganda and in that circumstance whether or not you believe it's ever ok for a government or the media to support an ideology the bottom line is we should all remember it's all too easy to become hypocritical when it comes to the support of our own police.

ok well governments are ideological by nature so the whole question seems a bit odd to me but there's no denying that there are more opinions and facts in today's mainstream press at least on television well georgetown university journalism professor chris chambers was with me earlier breaks it all down for us. the united states is a complicated kind of animal there's never we don't know aside from voice of america and all that other apparatus we don't have a state you know mouthpiece or you know that shoots out what you know that. well that's true but here's the thing is it what we really have are the government and other interests a lot of most of the time it's corporate interests big business certain movements you know being on the right of the left you know usually in the last twenty five thirty years going on the right using the media or people in the media like pundits or certain shows as proxies or chess pieces in their little war so it's not like

one big propaganda mouthpiece you know the stereotypical you know stalin kind of thing it's it's a lot of weird it's a chess game it's just came among giants and you know we become the little we don't we're not the pawns really bored basically and you know if you heard some of the people talk about the psychological aspect of it it's reptilian brain thing the raw meat issue it's the cognitive dissonance thing where you know and anything that comes into my brain that doesn't but what i'm about is bad it's propaganda it's crap so you know it's all that together and he's people know this in the media they know it in the government and they market to us accordingly so it's a chess game and if i was like a really bad but the same time you know this isn't the sixty's or the seventies i mean we don't we don't just turn on our local things can newscast and i thought all the media that we had i mean we could seek out other forms of information. that counterbalance sort of the not well it doesn't it doesn't i mean

a lot of what you have you know you have adult twitter which are people were people are are forwarding articles and then you have teenage twitter where people are talking about rianna but in the adult twitter world i mean you know that content that's being bounced around still has a point of view it's how to come from somewhere and that chess game is being fought you know online. line in social media as well i mean you know. you know breitbart didn't have a newspaper or a t.v. station he had a new site so you know you can that's where this is coming from so this is a levels and again people are using them as proxies i mean the government to i mean you go back to the second gulf war the bush administration had. you know x. pentagon generals on the payroll as pundits you could still find a still going on in. you know domestic affairs a. person i know pretty well armstrong williams was that was basically on the payroll to go on fox and search and online and give the you know the

administration's line so i mean you know you have that but it's probably that's about all it is at this point you know you could say fox is the official propaganda arm of the republican party in the republican party might say we're beholden to them not the other way around but those relationships are still there it's on talk radio you know in an uncertain blood i'm traveling here journalism professor right you're teaching the next generation of these these people these people are going to tell you there were there are alternative media i mean what do you tell them do you just a separate situation as it is a sort of teach them how to you know work with a new reality already you hold on to this notion. i mean there are differences of opinion i mean between our our underground graduate programs and faculty on you know both sides i mean i'm part of both and what i tell people is to work with and reality and to really work with and with with some kind of guidepost or a compass that will put on help you navigate through this but there are some people

who say look this is this is this world we're in now is crap and we have to do something about it but you know they're like the people who are kind of running up the hill from the title i'm trying to build a canoe or a surfboard for these kids or they can kind of ride it in and kind of pull things to some kind of situation where they're really ethically dealing with stuff but you have. to deal with with how the situation is as it is and even networks like c.n.n. or emerson d.c. that a lot of people think of the liberal propaganda i mean they're still corporately you if you don't believe that look how they cover it up you know occupy wall street or didn't cover it in issues like that so i mean it's you have to work within that kind of construct and that's what we're trying to do it sounds like an uphill battle and of course it's one thing we're talking about hot button social issues but it's another thing when there are serious foreign policy implications. that unfortunately that's all the time that we have the.